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The BOLSHEVIK
REVOLUTION :
Its Rise and Meaning
MAXIM LITVINOFF
Plenipotentiary of the > Russian
THIRD AND ENLARGED EDITION.
With additional chapter, compiled by IVY
LITVINOFF from notes left by her
husband, bringing the record down
to the end of 1918.
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LONDON:
ist Party, 21
trand, W.G.
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THE BOLSHEVIK
REVOLUTION :
ITS RISE AND MEANING
By
MAXIM LITVINOFF.
THE BRITISH SOCIALIST PARTY,
21a, Maiden Lane, Strand,
London, W.C. 2.
■•' .. •,.'
1
diversity of
»-A- ) ., 1)JJ .,.^
FOREWORD.
The present edition has been prepared by me
from notes left by my husband, who intended to
bring the narrative up to date and to give a de-
tailed account of the constructive work accom-
plished by the Soviets. I have confined myself
for the present to the narrative of events and to
the subject of the Red Terror.
Ivy Litvinoff.
805761
THE
Bolshevik Revolution
ITS RISE AND MEANING.
I. — The First Revolution (1905).
SOCIALISM IN POWER.
November, 6-7, 1917, will forai one of the most momentous
■dates in modern history ; in those days a Socialist revolu-
tion took place in Russia, and the working class, allied with
the peasantry, came to power. Because the revolution was
accomplished literally overnight without the loss of a single
•drop of blood, under the eyes of a world which had becoue
accustomed, after three years of universal slaughter, to
judge everything from the point of view of its bearing upon
the further course of the war, the significance of the event
was not at first grasped even by those whom it concerned
most closely— the Socialists and the working class of other
countries. They who, for a generation and more, had
cheered the " Social Revolution " at the close of every
propaganda meeting and national and international party
congress and had celebrated year after year the memory
of the Paris Commune as the great pledge of the future—
they, too, failed at first to perceive that that pledge had
been realised under their very eyes on a scale incomparably
larger than the Commune of Paris, and that the " Social
Revolution " was actually upon them. For the revolution
in Russia was no mere change of persons or parties at the
head of the State ; it was a change of classes at the fountain
of power and a change of the order of society, both political
and economic. Russia was to be no longer a bourgeois
(middle class) democratic republic, after the French or
American model, ruled by a Parliament and president, but
a social republic of the labouring classes, in which the power
was wielded, both centrally and locally, by direct delegates
of the working class and the peasantry under their
immediate and active control in the interests of those classes
themselves on the sole principle that labour was the source
■of all values and that its instruments must be the common
property of the people. This was not ojily a Social, but also
a Socialist Revolution, the practical implications of which
were to be worked out by the masses themselves under the
guidance of the Socialists of the " Bolshevik " school (as the
revolutionary wing of the Socialist movement is called in
Russia *), to whose foresight, initiative, and courage the
Great Change was due.
CONDITIONS IN RUSSIA.
How, it may well be asked, did it all come about ? How,
indeed, was such a revolution possible at all in a country
so ■ backward, economically and politically, as Russia ?
Without wishing to be paradoxical, one may reply that the
explanation of this apparent incongruity lies in the very
backwardness of Russia — in the fact that Russia has not
been able to produce a proper capitalist order, with a power-
ful capitalist class, such as in other countries has long been
in possession of the machinery of the State, has reorganised
it on settled democratic and parliamentary lines, and has
for generations dominated the minds of the people, including
the working class itself. It is just because all these essential
conditions of modern " bourgeois " life were lacking in
Russia, because the capitalist middle class were so weak
as actually to seek shelter under the wings of an antiquated
autocratic State system instead of fighting it, and because
the working class, and even the peasantry, had not yet
* " Bolshevik "is a bastard word signii3 T ing a person belonging to
the majority. It was coined after the first split of the Russian
Social Democratic party in 1903, when the more moderate wing was
left in a minority and the revolutionary wing gained a majority of
votes.
succumbed to the bourgeois order of moral and political
ideas, that the influence of revolutionary and Socialist
ideas' among the peoples of Russia became possible, and, in
face of the utter contradiction between the requirements of
progress and freedom of modern life and the vile, despotic
regime of the Autocracy and the landed nobility, indeed,
inevitable. More than a generation ago the first Russian
Socialist thinkers of the Marxist school had perceived and
proclaimed to the astonished world that in Russia a political
revolution would, in the absence of a vigorous capitalist
middle class, be effected by the working class, or not be
effected at all, and the revolution of 1905 fully bore out the
prognosis. In that revolution the middle class democracy
completely failed in the discharge of the mission which
historically had fallen upon it in other countries before, and
it was the working class, assisted in an inarticulate fashion
by the peasant masses, which carried out the work from
start to finish. In fact, if that revolution did not victori-
ously achieve its aim, it was due to that very failure of the
capitalist middle classes— the bourgeoisie, to use the
familiar term— who at the critical moment recoiled before
the open attack against Tsardom, and, accepting from its
hands a wretched sop, renounced all further struggle, and
even turned against the working class.
TACTICAL DIFFERENCES AMONG RUSSIAN
SOCIALISTS*
But in those early revolutionary days of 1905 the revolu-
tionary front itself was already exhibiting certain lines of
cleavage which it is important to note. Two years pre-
viously the Social Democratic Party, whose agitation among
the industrial masses caused their marvellous quickening
in 1905, had split into two sections, one more moderate, the
" Mensheviks," and the other more revolutionary and
uncompromising, the " Bolsheviks." The former were now
arguing that the revolution must be regarded essentially
as one similar to those which had preceded it in Europe,
that is, as a bourgeois revolution destined to bring the
capitalist class to power and to establish a bourgeois State.
The latter, on the contrary, were of the opinion that mas-
much as the hegemony in the revolution clearly belonged
to the working class, with which the landless peasantry
was in alliance, it must and should lead to the establishment
of the proletarian rule, and, at least, to a considerable
modification of the bourgeois State in a Socialist direction.
Trotsky went so far as to assert that that State could be
directly established on Socialist lines. Accordingly, the
Mensheviks were throughout in favour of a political alliance
with the bourgeoisie, especially the so-called Constitutional
Democrats (" Cadets," for short), and were opposed to the
continuance of the struggle beyond the point accepted by
them, as, provisionally or permanently, final. On the
other hand, the Bolsheviks demanded that the proletariat
should go on with the revolutoinary fight, even against the
will of the bourgeoisie, so long as it enjoyed the support of
the landless peasantry. Hence, when the Tsar issued his
famous " Constitutional Manifesto " of October 30th (1905)
under the pressure of a general strike and the Liberals
accepted it as the end of the struggle, the Mensheviks also
laid down their arms, while the Bolsheviks, distrusting the
Tsar's promises, organised yet a second general strike and
an armed insurrection in Moscow. Their efforts failed to
bring about the desired result, viz., the overthrow of the
entire Tsardom, root and branch, because of the division
in the ranks of the proletariat and the lack of support of
that section of the peasantry which formed the standing
army ; but the divergence of views was fraught with most
important consequences.
THE POLICY AFTER THE REVOLUTION.
These showed themselves very soon after the triumph
of the counter-revolution and the passing of the first horrors
of its gallows. Of course, the " constitution " granted by
the Tsar in 1905 duly turned out to be a fraud, as predicted
by the Bolsheviks, and so far from helping the bourgeois
State in coming into being, as had been expected by the
Cadets and the Mensheviks, it entirely subjected the bour-
geoisie to the power and influence of the Tsardom. What
was to be done next ? The Bolsheviks, faithful to their
principles, argued that now, as before, the duty of the
WW
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Social Democracy was to organise the working class for the
revolution, that for that object it must carry on among it
a revolutionary and Socialist propaganda, and educate it
for collective revolutionary action against the Autocracy.
Their opponents, the Mensheviks, disagreed with them.
The next revolution, in their opinion, was to be made prin-
cipally by the bourgeoisie; — with the help, it is true, of the
working class. The duty of Social Democracy was, they
considered, to back every effort of Liberalism to combat
the Autocracy in the Duma and elsewhere, and to influence-
the bourgeoisie in that direction. As for revolutionary
agitation among the working class, the Mensheviks held,
that it was both futile in view of the savage reactionary
regime instituted by the counter-revolution, and mis
chievous because it would automatically transform the
Socialist parties into " illegal " subterranean organisations,
with conspirative habits and methods, and thus prevent
them from becoming the advance guard of a mass-move-
ment of the proletariat such as was witnessed in other
countries. They went so far as to argue that a revolution-
ary movement' among the proletariat was, under the
obtaining conditions, not only impossible, but would if
it were possible, only frighten off the bourgeoisie, as it had:
done in* 1905, and thereby condemn itself to failure.
Again the Bolsheviks proved right. While the Men-
sheviks were writing articles against <the evils of the
counter-revolutionary regime on the one hand, and the
tactics of the Bolsheviks on the other, the latter were
organising and educating the working class, with the result
that the year 1910 saw the first political strikes and
demonstrations? the next year saw them in greater fre-
quency and on a larger scale, and then the revolutionary
wave of the proletarian movement began to rise higher and.
higher in the shape of political strikes and mass-protests
against the evil deeds of the Autocracy until barricades
suddenly made their appearance in the streets of Petrograd
— on the very day when the fatal order for mobilisation was
issued by the Tsar ! This is a cardinal fact to remember :
Russia was in the incipient throes of another revolution when
the war broke out, and the leaders of that revolution were the
Bolsheviks.
II.— The War.
THE PRE-WAR PLEDGES OF THE SOCIALISTS.
The war, as is well known, proved the political grave of
almost every Socialist party in Europe. I, ess than two
years previously, in November, 1912, in the midst of the
first Balkan war, the Socialist International had assembled
in Basel, Switzerland, to swear uncompromising hostility
to any attempt on the part of the European Governments
to create a universal conflict. It issued a Manifesto en-
dorsing in solemn accents the famous War Resolution
adopted at the International Socialist Congresses of Stutt-
gart (1907) and Copenhagen (1910) : —
" If war threatens to break out, the working class and
its parliamentary representatives in the countries
affected are bound, with the support of the unifying
activity of the International Socialist Bureau, to do
all they can, by employing the means which appear to
them most effective, to prevent the outbreak of the
war. , . . Should, however, war break out, the
Socialists are bound to intervene for its earliest cessa-
tion and to make every possible use of the economic
and political crisis caused by the war, in order to rouse
the people and thus to accelerate the downfall of the
domination of Capital."
The resolution had been carefully worded at Stuttgart
in order not to give the German police a handle against
the German Socialists, but everybody had well understood
the meaning of the phrase, " means which appear to them
most effective," and of the words, " rouse the people."
The Basel Manifesto, indeed, spoke quite plainly when it
said :• — •
" The Congress invites the workers of all countries
to oppose the power of the international solidarity of
the proletariat to capitalist Imperialism. It warns the
ruling classes in all countries against the consequences
of the further deterioration of the wretched condition
of the masses, as caused by the capitalist mode of
10
production, by warlike operations, and most urgently
and insistently demands the preservation of peace.
Let the Governments remember that in the present
condition of Europe and in the present temper of the
working class they cannot let loose the furies of war
without creating a grave danger for themselves. Let
them remember that the Franco-Prussian war was
followed by the Commune, that the Russo-Japanese
war set into motion the revolutionary forces of all the
peoples of the Russian Empire. "
It is thus plain that in the opinion of the International
assembled at Basel the outbreak of a European war would
fully justify revolutionary action on the part of the working
classes. And lest the clear issue between " capitalist
Imperialism " and the " international solidarity of the
proletariat " in any future war might be confused by various
national and humanitarian watchwords (as we now know
has actually happened) the Basel Manifesto, with a truly
prophetic insight, proceeded to review in detail the numerous
separate conflicts then maturing, in order to expose their
true nature. Beginning with Turkey, it said that " the
Great Powers had systematically obstructed the course
of reforms " in the Ottoman Empire, whereby an intoler-
able economic and political state of affairs had been brought
about there, which the Balkan States " were now trying to
exploit in the interests of their respective dynasties and
capitalist middle classes." On the other hand, referring
to the policy pursued in the Balkans by Austria-Hungary,
it spoke of the " attempts made by it against Serbia " with
a view to " turning it into a colony of the Danubian
Monarchy." Again, it warned against the rivalries of
Austria-Hungary and Italy in Albania, who " under the
guise of Albania's autonomy," were fighting to draw that
country " within their respective spheres of influence."
As regards Russia, it observed that " should Tsardom once
more come forward as the liberator of the Balkan nations
it would only do so in order to make it a pretext for obtain-
ing, by means of a bloody war, the predominance in the
Balkans," and urged that " the overthrow of Tsardom must
be considered by the entire International as one of its chief
11
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aims." Turning to the other Powers, it denounced in
advance anW and every armed conflict between them as
" a piece of criminal insanity," and the antagonisms
between thin as " artificial," being due to " policies of
conquests " carried on by them in Asia Minor.
THE COLLAPSE OF THE INTERNATIONAL AND THE
RUSSIAN WORKERS
To all these sentiments and views of the international
situation the! Socialist parties represented at Basel sub-
scribed with ; enthusiasm. And the result ? As soon as
war broke out. the overwhelming majority of them sprang
to the side of their respective Governments, all pledges
were forgotten, and the nationalist watchwords were caught
up with extreme avidity. Never had such a sudden and
complete collapse of a great movement and a great faith
been witnessed in history. And the Russian working classes,
the Russian Socialists ? Alone among the labouring masses
of Europe those of Russia received the mobilisation order
and the news of the outbreak of war with undisguised hos-
tility and with a clear insight into the hidden imperialist
springs of the conflict. For several days, in spite of the
large inroads made in their ranks by the mobilisation of the
army, the revolutionary working class of Petrograd kept
up an attitude of menacing expectancy, in the hope that
their brethren in Germany and Austria, as well as in France
and Great Britain, would support them. Alas, the support
was not forthcoming. On the contrary, the Socialists in
the West were voting the war credits and proclaiming a
national truce with the capitalists ! ' In Russia itself the
collapse of at least one party was also complete ; the bulk
of the Men shevik l eaders— for the most part intellectuals-
had "gone over,""bag~and baggage,~To~Ehe pajnaticcamp.
It is true that the Menshevik leaders in the Duma abstained
from voting the war credits ; but that was not enough as a
ba£tle-cry. It was a manifestation of mistrust, but not an
act of protest or a challenge. And the Bolsheviks ? To
the misfortune of the country, and perhaps to the world at
large, all the most notable Bolshevik leaders (as well as most
Menshevik-Internationalists) were at that time abroad,
Ilml.-."^'
12
as exiles in various countries. Their voice could not reach
the masses, and the latter, seeing themselves abandoned
by their fellow-workers in other countries and left/ without
a lead, reluctantly gave up the struggle and surrendered
to the inevitable, reinforced as the inevitable was by martial
law. /
THE ATTITUDE OF THE BOLSHEVIK^
But though they laid down their arms, the workers of
Russia did not surrender their political views, nor, in
particular, their views on the war, and did not succumb
to the nationalist and patriotic orgy which wa^ let loose
in Russia, as elsewhere. The moral and intellectual,
foundations which had been laid in their minjis by the
Bolsheviks were, indeed, " well and truly laid," and on
them the Bolsheviks were able to build further, in spite,
or rather because, of the war, with the utmost success.
For the Bolsheviks, like the Serbian, the Rumanian, and the
Italian Socialists, and the tiny fraction of the German
Socialist party, which was represented by Liebknecht,
Mehring, Klara Zetkin, and others, remained true to their
Socialist principles and to the policy laid down in the Basel
Manifesto ; and immediately proclaimed their unalterable
and implacable opposition to the war. In the first leaflet
issued immediately after the outbreak of war the Petrograd
Committee of the Bolsheviks put the question fairly and
squarely : " Who are our enemies ? " and replied: —
" We are robbed by the landlords, we are robbed by
the manufacturers, the houseowners, and the trades-
men, we are robbed by the police, we are robbed by
the Tsar and his officials. And when we become tired
of this robbery, when we want to protect our interests,
when we want to proclaim a strike, the police, the
soldiers, and the Cossacks are let loose against us, we
are attacked, we are thrown into prison, we are de-
ported to Siberia, and we are hunted down like mad
dogs. Those are our real enemies. . . . But now they
want to mislead us and make us believe that our enemy
is the German whom we have never seen in face at all.
They want to incite us against the Germans, and
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13 UsiHrersity of Texts
i Estill, Texas
because they require our arms and our fists they sing
a song about national unity. Now they are trying to
prevail upon us that we should forget all internal strife,
that we should all unite in one patriotic gush, that
we should renounce our own workers' cause, that we
should make their cause our own, and that we should
conquer jresh lands for their Tsar and their landowners*
But shall we, Russian workers, really be so foolish as
to take these lying phrases seriously ? Shall we really
betray our own cause ? No. If we must sacrifice
our lives, let us do so for our own cause, and not in the
interests hi the Romanoffs and their landowners. They
are placing arms in our hands. WeH and good. Let
us be men, let us take the arms in order to conquer for
the working class new conditions of life."
These and innumerable similar leaflets were issued and
circulated secretly among the masses in tens of thousands
of copies — first in the capital, and then throughout the^
length and breadth of the land, at a time when the leaders
of the Mensheviks were preaching a war on German
" Militarism and Kaiserism " and were making up their
old quarrels with Tsardom. Already in November, 1914, the ^ X^vuiaji
five Bolshevik members of the Duma were arrested, together v > VJj~- '
with Kameneff, one of the closest associates of Lenin, and , A La. ■.
after a mock trial were, a few months after, deported to \JyoA->
Siberia. Abroad Lenin and Zinovieff were carrying on a
most energetic and effective agitation against the " Social
Patriots " of all countries, sparing neither the German nor
the French " majorities," and attacking the similar brood in
the Russian ranks, from Plekhanoff, the father of Russian .
Social Democracy, now turried^ingoT^ownwardi" with un-
abated vigour. Their point of view was throughout : the*
present war was an Imperialist war ; their duty was not
only to fight it, but also to endeavour to transform it into
a struggle for the emancipation of the working-class ; and
lest it be said that thereby the country would be endangered,,
they, the Bolsheviks, did not hesitate to proclaim : " We
are Russians, and for that very reason we want Tsardom
to be defeated." Their faith in the coming revolution was
unshakable. In January, 1915, in the height of the sue-
805761
14
cesses of the Russian arms, at a tune when all Eutope was
flooded by a sea of Jingo sentiment, when Plekhatnoff was
preaching a " fight to a finish " against Prussia-Germany,
and Vandervelde, President of the International Socialist
Bureau, was publicly appealing to the Russian /Socialists
to make common cause with the Tsar, the central organ of
the Bolsheviks was shouting at the top of its voide, so that
everybody might hear : —
" Yet it moves. You remember the thunderous
awakening of the Russian working class and of the
entire Russian democracy after the bloodshed of January
22nd, 1905 (' Bloody Sunday ' at Petrognd, which
ushered in the first revolution) ? A similar thunderous
awakening shall be witnessed after the present war,
after this world-wide slaughter which has irrigated by
human blood the fields extending over thousands of
miles along the present battle fronts, which has coloured
red scores and hundreds of rivers in France, in Russian
Poland, in Serbia, and in Turkey. The hour of settling
the accounts will come. The dawn of civil war will
begin. Let there be darkness round us at present.
Let treachery and cowardice surround us on all — even
the least expected — sides. We, on our part, believe
in our old banner."
And when the Russian troops were first defeated, in
May, 1915, on the battle-fields of Galicia, when the cry
for national unity and for an all-national effort resounded
throughout Russia with a redoubled force, and when the
Mensheviks, swept off their feet by the new gush of patriotic
excitement, though pretending to pursue mysterious
revolutionary aims, joined the capitalists in the formation
of Munitions Committees, the Bolshevik organ wrote : —
" The military debacle of Tsardom is close upon us.
I 1 A terrible economic exhaustion is overtaking the country
"as~aTlfesuH^^tie present criminal war. The country
' will not forgive Tsardom all these millions of lives, all
this sea of blood, all these oceans of tears. Down with
the Tsarist gang ! . . . . The last card of the Tsar
will be beaten. Whomever the Gods wish to destroy
15
is deprived of his reason. Tsardom recklessly threw
itself Unto this desperate game. But the Nemesis of
HistoW is having her own. Already, through the
booming of the guns, one can hear the distant funeral
bells of the Tsarist Monarchy."
These were prophetic words, because they were dictated
by true revolutionary insight j two years later the Tsar's
Monarchyjwas taken to the grave amidst the jubilation of
the Russiajn people and of the world at large.
III.4~The Revolution of March,
1917.
THE /POLITICAL BANKRUPTCY OF TSARDOM
The collapse, of the Russian front on May 3rd, 1915, under
the onslaught of von Mackensen's phalanx sounded, as the
Bolshevik organ rightly perceived, the death-knell of"
Russian Tsardom. It is true, as we saw, that Russia was
on the brink of a revolutoin in the last days of July, 1914.
It is also true that after the first revolutionary upheaval
of 1905, which had entirely changed the mentality of the
Russian people, and, to a large extent, also produced a
change in the economic structure of the country, the
obsolete form of autocratic Government, forcibly restored
with the assistance of the propertied classes, was destined
sooner or later to disappear. Nevertheless, it was the
war, with its attendant disasters, both at the front and in
the tear, which made the inevitable come rather sooner
than later, and at the same time ensured its success by
spreading among the peasantry and the army the temper
which had become alive among the industrial working class
on the eve of the war. For those disasters, as even a child
could see, were not mere accidents, but, on the contrary,.
the natural results of the Tsarist system of government,.
with its corruption, inefficiency, and obstructive influence-
on the life-processes of the nation. The disasters were
caused, in the first place, by a most appalljnglack of guns
and munitions. Yet scores of millions had been spent on.
re
the equipment of the army during the preceding tfen years.
What had become of them ? They had gone (into the
P2£^i ts of corrupt generals^and contractors and had been
wasTed'~T5y~ incompetent administrators. Who Were the
army leaders ? They were men of the same stamp as
those who had lost the war in Manchuria ten years pre-
viously. They had, for the most part, attained their high
posts through patronage and drawing-room influence,
■and many of them were downright traitors, as Was proved
in the case of General Rennenkampf, the hero of the disaster
at Tannenberg, and General Sukhomlinoff, the Wir Minister
to supply
' Germany
one thing,
3y Parlia-
himself. _ Again, why did not Russia prove able
the deficiencies in munitions herself, as England o
did, as soon as they were perceived ? Because, for
the higher army administration, uncontrolled L
ment, concealed the facts from the public, and because,
on the other hand, Russia's industrial development had
been grievously retarded by the Tsarist regime, Which by
its exactions for itself, for the big landowners, arid for the
capitalists, had entirely impoverished the masses ahd under-
mined their purchasing power. Above all, why was the
country, which had hitherto .been one of the principal
agricultural countries in Europe, suddenly hurled into the
abyss of famine ? Because all the able-bodied male popula-
tion had been recklessly drawn into the army, because the
widest scope had been given to speculators and landowners,
and becaj^theweak transport system had been criminally
allowed to come to complete, ruin. All this, in its causes
and effects, became clear to the simplest peasant in. the
country, as well as to the soldier at the front, and Tsar-
dom lost in the eyes of the people whatever moral autho-
rity it still possessed. Added to it were the Court scandals
associated with the name of Rasputin and other low
adventurers, which helped to open the people's eyes as to
the true nature of the autocracy. In the end the capitalist
middle classes themselves were gradually driven into oppo-
sition to the Tsarist regime. After all, it was their State
which was being ruined in the war through the incom-
petency and corruption of that regime, it was their own
propertied interests which were likely to suffer if the dis-
u
17
content of the masses led to a revolution, and it was their
schemes and hopes which were being destroyed by the
disasters of the war and the obvious inability of Tsardom
to retrieve its fortunes.
THE LIBERAL OPPOSITION TO A REVOLUTION.
Nevertheless it was not the capitalist middle classes who
made the revolution. On the contrary, strongly as they
detested Tsardom, they still more strongly detested the
idea of a revolution, and none other than Miliukoff , the well-
known leader of the Russian Liberals, publicly stated in
the Duma, in reply to a taunt by the Monarchists, that .
" rather than organise the country for national defence,
if that should help the organisation of the revolutionary
forces, he would leave her as she was," that is, defenceless
against the Germans. The utmost these classes were pre
pared to do was to depose the Tsar by means of a secret
Palace Revolution, and to put up another in his place who
would drive away the Rasputins from the court and sur-
round himself by better men " enjoying the confidence of
the nation," t hat is, Liberals,, For such a " revolution '■'
tfiey, indeed, began actively to conspire with certain Grand.
Dukes and high officers when it became known that the
court was intriguing for a separate peace. with the enemy.
But, happily, the masses of the people, acting spontaneously,,
forestalled them. They looked at the situation from
quite a different point of view. They did not want to save
the State of the Tsar and the capitalists. They did net.,
care a jot for the conquest of Constantinople and Galicia..
What they saw was that the Socialists had been right in
denouncing the war as an old Imperialist enterprise r Ed-
predicting from it untold calamities. The}' saw in the Tsar
but a worthy emblem of the war and of the capitalist State,.
and in striking a blow against him they were intending to
strike a blow also for peace, for bread, and for liberty against;
all forms of exploitation.
THE DOWNFALL OF TSARDOM.
The blow, as is well known, fell on March 12th, and two
days later the Tsar was no more. The women of the people,.
18
standing in queues in front of food shops, began the dance
which soon developed into skirmishes between the police
and the crowds in the streets. Then Cossacks were sent to
make use of their whips, but they partly refused to do so
and partly were met by soldiers of certain regiments of the
-Guards who took the part for the people. Street fighting
rapidly developed, more and more regiments went over to
the people, the arsenals were sacked and their contents
distributed among the crowds, and, before anyone was
properly aware, the capital was in the hands of the workers
and soldiers. In vain did the Liberals send wire after wire
to the Tsar, who was then at the front, imploring him to
save the situation by dismissing Jiis old advisers and
appointing a new Government from their own midst and
other persons " enjoying public confidence." While he
hesitated and tried this measure and that, the people of
Petrograd were acting, seizing one Government institution
after the other, and setting up a Council of Workers' and
Soldiers' Delegates (Soviet) as a sort of Revolutionary Con-
vention, there by compelling the Liber als, assembled as an
executive committee of the Duma, to establish a Provisional
Government and to proclaim the deposition of the Tsar.
Of course, the Liberals did not want a republic, and, while
deposing the Tsar, they at the same time appointed his
brother, the Grand Duke Michael, to succeed him. But the
Soviet and the people of Petrograd would not hear of any
new Tsar, and the Grand Duke had to sign, simultaneously
with the Tsar himself, an act of abdication " pending the
meeting of a Constituent Assembly/' An attempt was
then made by the Liberals to establish at least a military
dictatorship, with a view to the further prosecution of the
war, under the Grand Duke Nicholas Nicolayevitch, the
former Generalissimo, but this, too, came to naught.
Eventually the Liberals withdrew all opposition to the
revolution, which now spread to Moscow and all provincial
towns, meeting nowhere with any resistance, but being
greeted everywhere with the utmost enthusiasm. Those
were, perhaps, the happiest days in the history of Russia.
19
THE BLUNDERS OF THE SOVIET LEADERS.
But they also contained the germs of all future compli-
cations. It must again be borne in mind that at that time
there were practically no Bolshevik leaders in Russia, and
that most of the Socialists acting in Petrograd belonged
to the more opportunist and wholly or partly " patriotic "
party of Mensheviks, with just a dash of that moderate wing
of the " Socialist-Revolutionaries '' (a party of Peasant
Socialism and Political Terrorism, at that time small, but
destined to grow large in the near future), which under the
name of the " Group of Toil," formed a small body of Duma
parlia mentarians, and counted as its leader Alexander
KerensEyTa "young enthusiastic barrister; with no political
experience. When, therefore, the first Soviet was formed,
men like Tchkheidze, the parliamentary leader of the Men-
sheviks, and Kerensky became its natural heads, and their
followers constituted the main leaven of the new and in-
experienced revolutionary organisation. This explains the
singular circumstance that though the revolution was made
by the working class and the soldier-peasants, and though
the actual power was concentrated in their hands, the Soviet
allowed the exercise of that power to pass into the hands of
the propertied classes, as represented by the Provisional
Government which had been appointed by the committee
of the Duma. That Government had at its head a Prince
Lvoff, a colourless politician of the moderate Liberal .school,
and included, along with a number of " Cadets," Miliukof l
the Imperialist Liberal, as Foreign Secretary, and Gutch-
koff, a gentleman of the same type belonging to the rich
manufacturing and financial bourgeoisie, as Minister of War.
Kerensky, who had never been a revolutionary and who
had no authority among the masses, was the only repre-
sentative of the new democracy in the Government, having
joined it on his own initiative, though subsequently allowed
to remain there by the Soviet. Tchkheidze himself, who was
President of the Soviet, though invited to take a seat in the
Cabinet, wisely declined to do so, being opposed to any
coalition with the bourgeoisie. Such an opposition was
perfectly correct, but one may ask, was it at all necessary
that a bourgeois Government should come into existence ?
20
Was it at all necessary that the proletariat should abdicate
its power in favour of a class which had been opposed to
the revolution and which was well known to entertain
totally different views on the war from those held by the
great masses of the people ? The action of the Soviet in
shrinking from the assumption of Government power by
itself at a time when it was omnipotent and the bourgeoisie
was " simply nowhere " constituted a disastrous blunder
that can only be explained by the Menshe vik infatuation
with their dogma that the revolution was~and must remain
a " bourgeois " one.
IV — Anti- Bolshevism in Ascendancy
THE POSITION OF THE BOLSHEVIKS.
The first act of the victorious revolution — the establishment
of a Provisional Government — took place, as mentioned,
in the absence of all the most authoritative leaders of
Bolshevism ; but no sooner did the first of them, Kameneff,
return from his Siberian exile, than the Bolsheviks took up
an attitude of definite opposition to the action of the Soviet
leaders in depriving the proletariat of all real power and
transferring all Government authority to the capitalist
middle class. Towards the end of April the other leaders
of Bolshevism, with Lenin at their head, returned from
abroad. The political atmosphere had by that time already
become considerably heated owing to the Bolshevik agita 7
tion in favour of the assumption of Government power bf
the Soviet itself, and the counter-agitation of the Mensheviks
and Socialist-Revolutionaries in favour of allowing the
bourgeoisie to carry out the programme of the Revolution
— peace, land reform, democratic reconstruction, the
summoning of the Constituent Assembly, etc. — in its own
bourgeois fashion. When, therefore, Lenin and his friends
(including, it must be noted, a considerable number of Men-
sheviks of the Internationalist wing, under Martoff) on
being prevented by the Governments of France and Great
Britain from choosing the ordinary route from Switzerland,
made their way home through German territory in closed
f/VO
21
carriages {in accordance with arrangements made by Swiss
Socialist leaders with the German Government), a howl of
well-simulated execration arose in the bourgeois Press,
having for its object to discredit Bolshevism and its policy
in the eyes of the masses. Lenin and his friends were re-
presented as agents, or at least favourites, of the German
Government, and their advocacy of the transfer of Govern-
ment authority to the Soviets was denounced as a
manoeuvre to split the forces of the revolution for the benefit
of the crafty enemy. The campaign, no doubt, had con-
siderable success, and the position of the official Soviet
leaders was immensely strengthened, to the great joy of
the Cadets and other political parties of the capitalist
bourgeoisie.
Nevertheless, the Bolsheviks continued their campaign
with ever-increasing vigour. In this connection the position
Vv^taken up by Lenin personally deserves to be noted. As
soon as he arrived^ he "submitted a new programme to his
party and the people at large, of which the main plank was
that Russia must become not a bourgeois democratic, and,
therefore, not a parliamentary republic, after the French or
American model, but a Soviet republic, that is, a common-
wealth in which the central power would belong to a central
committee of all the Soviets in the country, and the local
government would be carried on by the local Soviets of
delegates from the working class and the poorer peasantry,
as the sole organs of the State. In other words, the Russian
republic was to be a republic in which the proletariat
classes would alone exercise authority, to the exclusion of
the capitalist and landlord classes and their hangers-on.
j It would be a Socialist State organisation, pursuing as its
| ultimate object the expropriation of the propertied classes
I and the socialisation of the means of production.
This scheme was so bold, in face of the known economic
backwardness of the country and the widely spread dogmas
of the other Socialists, that Lenin's own closest friends
shrank from it and refused to accept it. Lenjjowas com-
■> pelled to drop it for a time, expecting that life would in due
1 course prove a more convincing teacher than himself. And
I life, indeed, brilliantly justified his expectation.
22
THE FALL OF THE IMPERIALISTS.
In the meantime, however, experience bore out the other
views of the Bolsheviks. The Soviet, faithfully reflecting
the innermost desires of the masses, at once raiseoj the
question of peace, and in an historical address tq the
" Peoples of the World," dated March 27th, laid down the
proposition that the present war was an Imperialist war,
and that it was the duty, as well as the interest, of the
labouring classes everywhere to compel their respective
Governments to terminate the struggle by a peace which
would involve no annexations and no indemnities, and
grant every nation the right to determine its own fate.
Under the pressure of the masses the Provisional Govern-
ment agreed to announce this programme to the people of
Russia as its official diplomatic policy, but when it came to
its transmission to the Allies, as a preliminary to an invita-
tion to revise their war aims in accordance with its principles,
Miliukoff, the leader of. the. Cadets and Foreign Minister
1 coverednrby_a_ngte~setting forth his own Imperialist war
I vlewsT and practically inviting the Allies to ignore the
democratic programme of the Soviet. This was an illum-
inating revelation of the innermost mind of the Russian
bourgeoisie and a warning to the people as to the dangers
which it was running in permitting the capitalist parties
to manage the business of government. Again the masses
of Petrograd rose, as they had done two months previously ;
Miliukoff and his bosom friend Gutchkoff were driven from
office, and the revolution was confronted with its first
crisis.
THE COALITION GOVERNMENT.
Here was a chance of correcting the initial mistake com-
mitted by the Soviet leaders. Did the Mensheviks and
the Socialist-Revolutionaries learn at last the lesson ?
Not they ! Deeply attached as they were to their dogma
that the revolution must be a bourgeois one, they refused
once more to proclaim the Soviets as the sole possessors
of Government authority, and decided to depute from their
f own midst four persons (including Tseretelli, one of the most
influential and talented Mensheviks, and Tchernoff, the
23
leader of the Socialist-Revolutionaries) to join the Cabinet,,
with a view to controlling its policy and actions, and, in-
cidentally, to counteracting the Bolshevik agitation by
offering, as it were, security in their own persons for the
loyalty of the new Provisional Government. .
This was the second, and, if possible, still greater, blunder t
committed by the non-Bolshevik Socialists, for, having now
i attached themselves to the principle of a coalition Govern-
ment as the highest measure, compatible with their postu-
late as to the rule of the bourgeoisie, which permitted the
Soviets to exercise control over the Provisional Government,
they henceforth became simple hostages in the hands of the
bourgeoisie, whose representatives were now in a position
to bring every pressure to bear upon their colleagues, and,
indirectly, upon the Soviet dominated by them, by threats
of resignation and termination of the precious coalition.
The result, indeed, was that all projects of reform, including
the summoning of a Constituent Assembly, and the land
distribution, were now shelved indefinitely, and instead of
working for peace the Government, whose most active
member now became Kerensky, the successor of Gutchkoff
in the War Office, began now to make active preparations
for an offensive, in order, as they said, to make the voice of
Russian democracy " weighty," both in the councils of the
Allies and in the future negotiations with the enemy.
THE JULY OFFENSIVE.
The masses of the people, who had expected from the
revolution the end of all their sorrow, that is, peace, reform,
and bread, did not understand this clever diplomacy, and
began to listen again to the Bolsheviks, who were now
openly opposing the policy of the Provisional Government
as counter-revolutionary, tending towards a. monarchist
restoration, or, at least, a military dictatorship, and de-
nouncing their Socialist opponents as aiders and abettors
in the betrayal of the revolution. On July 1st came the
new offensive, to end, three weeks after, in a complete
rout of the Russian army ; but previous to that, on July
16th, the masses of Petrograd again rose in revolt— this
time against the Provisional Government as a whole and
24
the coalition principle in particular — without any lead from
the Bolshevik party, but no doubt under the influence of
its agitation. This time the rising was unsuccessful in spite
of its promising beginning, partly because it had not been
organised, but partly also because a mass of forged
documents had been, secretly set in Circulation, among
the Pctrograd troops, " with the connivance of the
Government," showing that Lenin, Trotsky, and other
Bolsheviks were in the pay of Germany. The opportunity
was a happy one for the bourgeoisie, who were now able to
connect the rising with the disaster at the front by repre-
senting the former as the cause of the latter, and thereby
to create a double diversion by divesting itself of all re-
sponsibility for the fiasco of the offensive and by inciting
all " true patriots " against the Bolsheviks. A period
almost as reactionary as any which had characterised the
Tsarist regime now followed. The Bolshevik leaders and
their followers were hunted down like wild beasts ; Trotsky,
Kameneff, Alexandra Kolontay, and hundreds of others
were thrown into prison ; Lenin and Zinovieff were obliged
to seek safety in hiding ; the Bolshevik papers were sup-
pressed one after the other— in fact, a. veritable orgy of
white terror was now set up, with restored death penalty
for military offences at the front, and with the final
abandonment of all reform and all peace talk.
That was a very critical moment for the revolution, and
had it not been for the arrogance and premature haste of
the bourgeoisie, which suddenly, without shame, revealed
now its cloven foot, the situation might have easily
•developed into a military dictatorship, with the restoration
•of the monarchy as its ultimate end. As it was, even the
Menshevik leaders and Kerensky (who had in the mean-
while become the head of the Provisional Government)
began to feel uneasy at this ostentatious display of reaction-
ary proclivities by the bourgeoisie, and when the latter's
candidate for the rdle of Bonaparte, General Korniloff, the
Supreme Commander-in-Chief, raised the standard of revolt
against the Government, demanding the establishment of
a Directory, with himself at its head, the revolutionary
democracy was at once aroused from its torpor. Korniloff
25
was crashed by the efforts of the railwaymen, the working
men's Red Guards, and the Lettish troops (Bolsheviks to
a man), and the Bolshevik party emerged triumphant as
the only people who had seen the danger and who were
right in their political programme.
THE FALL OF THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT.
But, like the proverbial men whom the gods strike with
blindness because they want to destroy them, the Men-
sheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries could not even now
emancipate themselves from the spell of their mischievous
doctrines and continued to cling to their dogma about the
bourgeois character of the revolution, etc. While the
workers and the soldiers were flocking in crowds to the
banner of the Bolsheviks, demanding, as the least concession
from the official Soviet leaders, the summoning of a congress
of all the Soviets of Russia to consider the problems at
issue, those leaders found nothing better to do than to call
together a mock-democratic congress consisting of delegates
from co-operative societies, professional organisations
(such as those of medical men, journalists, barristers, civil
engineers), municipalities, county councils, and even
employers' associations, to " deliberate " upon the situation
along with a limited number of representatives from the
Soviets and Peasants' Councils. That was equivalent to
a direct challenge to the workers' and soldiers' democracy
of Russia, and when the precious " democratic ' conference,
after a good deal of most unscrupulous wirepulling on the
part of the old leaders, decided, by a small majority of
votes, in favour of the continuance of the Coalition, and
elected from its own midst, with the addition of a large
number of members from the propertied classes, a " parlia-
ment " fro tern, to " control " the new Coalition Cabinet,
the measure of patience of the masses was filled to over-
flowing. While that " parliament, "_ doing honour to its
name, spread itself in unlimited and futile talk, of which
not even its admirers were taking the slightest notice, the
Bolsheviks actively began organising the masses for a new
rising, and openly proclaimed in their papers and at
innumerable public meetings their intention to lead the^
26
people in an effort to overthrow the Government and the
" parliament." Never in previous history had a rising been
prepared so openly, so publicly, under the eyes of all the
world, as this second, the Bolshevik, revolution. It was a
public challenge, as it were, to the Kerenskys, the Tsere-
tellis, the Tchernoffs, and the entire bourgeoisie to defend
themselves against the coming onslaught. The challenge
was laughed at or denounced as criminal, and measures
were taken to meet it should it really, by chance, be carried
out. But when the night of November 6-7, fixed for the
commencement of the operations, came, the whole edifice
reared up by the coalition-mongers and their Government
and precious bourgeoisie collapsed like a house of cards.
Workmen organised in Red Guards and troops commanded
by leaders appointed by a Military Revolutionary Com-
mittee quietly went round the various Govrnment estab-
lishments, such as the central telephone station, the military
staff quarters, etc., and took possession of them, and in the
course of the following day the Government was arrested,
all Petrograd (and then Moscow) was in the hands of the
Bolsheviks, a new Government under the title of Council
of People's Commissaries was formed, and the great revolu-
tion was accomplished without any bloodshed.
■•-'•r.-t-....
[[I!
V- — The Bolshevik Revolution.
THEIR SUPPORT BY THE MASSES,
In seizing the reins of power the Bolsheviks were obviously
playing a game "with high stakes. Petrograd had shown
itself entirely on their side. To what extent would the
masses of the proletariat and the peasant army in the rest
of the country support them ? The Bolsheviks were not
the men to shirk the issue. Though the Central. Executive
of the Soviets, elected by the Soviets' congress in June,
and therefore still dominated by Mensheviks and Socialist-
Revolutionaries, had opposed the idea of a new congress,
on the initiative of, and under pressure from, the Bol-
sheviks, one had been summoned, in a legal way, by the
Central Executive Committee, to meet at Petrograd on
Z1
November 7th, that is, on the morrow of the day fixed for
the revolution. The composition of the congress fully bore
out the expectations of the Bolsheviks and allayed the
fears of those among them who were inclined to doubt the
appropriateness of the time chosen for the revolution. Of
the 676 delegates who came from all parts of Russia and
were elected on a most democratic basis, no fewer than 390
or more than half, were Bolsheviks, 199 were Socialist-
Revolutionaries of the Left, 35 were Internationalist Social
Democrats, 21 were Ukrainian Social Democrats, and only
51 belonged to the Mensheviks and the Socialist- Revolu-
tionaries of the Right. Before the proper proceedings
began, these last-named 51 delegates, perceiving the hope-
lessness of their position, rose to declare that they would
have nothing in common with the " usurpers " and left the
congress. The remaining 625 soon found a common basis
in their approval of the Bolshevik revolution, drew up a
series of resolutions on peace, land, and a number of other
important subjects, elected a new central executive com-
mittee to act as their standing organ of control and legis-
lation, and approved the formation of a new Government
in the form of a Council of People's Commissaries (each
standing at the head of a permanent committee charged
with the administration of various Ministries), with Lenin
as President and Trotsky as Commissioner for Foreign
Affairs. The Bolshevik revolution thus received the
sanction of the workers and the soldiers united in the
Soviets.
THEIR IMMEDIATE MEASURES.
But this was only the first step, and innumerable diffi-
culties at once rose on all sides. The first act of the new
Government was immediately to translate the resolutions
of the Soviets' Congress into life by means of decrees. One
decree was in the form of ,a formal and official invitation
to all belligerent Powers at once to suspend hostilities, to
conclude an armistice, and to begin negotiations for
peace on the democratic formula drawn up by Russian
people after the overthrow of Tsardom. The other trans-
ferred all lands hitherto in possession of private landlords,
of the Imperial family, of the Church, etc., with the excep-
28
tion of the small peasant and Cossack, to the peasantry at
large, to be administered and distributed for use by peasant
committees acting in conjunction with the local Soviets on
such a basis that no one should receive more land than he
and his family could cultivate efficiently without hired
labour or less land than is required for his and his family's
needs. A third decree established a control of production
by working-class committees supervising all the industrial
establishments of their respective localities in conjunction
with the local Soviets, and under the supreme control of
the Supreme Economic Council, formed by representatives
from various people's Commissions. This latter was a
measure of combating war-profiteering, speculation, con-
spiracies of manufacturers against the revolution, and
other capitalist practices, as well as the first step towards
the taking over of all the means of production by the
people. Subsequently to these measures were added a
number of others, such as the nationalisation of the banks,
the establishment of a Government monopoly in agricul-
tural machinery, and, above all, the transfer of all local
authority to the Soviets as the authorised organs of the
State.
The three first-named measures had figured in the pro-
grammes of all the Russian Socialist parties, and the land
measure had actually been " lifted " bodily from the
programme of the Socialist-Revolutionaries. In spite of
this, the other Socialist and semi-Socialist parties immedi
ately declared war upon the Bolsheviks. Though the new
Government at once made a formal offer to their Socialist
opponents to share power with them on the basis of pro-
portional representation, the Mensheviks and the Socialist-
J Revolutionaries refused to have anything to do with them,
and demanded their resignation and the formation of a
I coalition Socialist Government (they no longer spoke of a
i coalition with the Cadets !) without the Bolsheviks. Even
the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, though in the main
agreed with the Bolsheviks, at first had not the courage to
enter the Council of People's Commissaries, and only did so
many weeks later after much hesitation. Neutral bodies,
like certain trade unions, attempted several times to mediate
29
between the Socialist parties, insisting upon a coalition
Socialist Government. Each time the Bolsheviks readily
assented to the proposal. Each time, however, the attempt
broke down because the opponents of the Bolsheviks either
demanded the latter' s complete self-elimination (the self-
elimination, that is, of the strongest political party in the
country, which entirely dominated the proletariat and the
soldiers) or the withdrawal of the three fundamental
decrees, to the substance of which they had themselves
been committed both before and after the March revolution.
This attitude did not prevent the non-Bolshevik Socialists
continuing to hurl at the heads of the opponents the
charges of " usurpation " and " little Tsars," which
became still more ridiculous after a specially summoned
peasant congress had by a great majority approved of the
Bolshevik revolution and programme, and charged its own
executive committee to join the central executive commit-
tee of the Soviets in permanent alliance. Not only, then,
the working-class and soldiers now rallied to the Bolshevik
banner, but also the bulk of the peasants, and that meant
the overwhelming majority of the nation.
That this was really so, and not merely a formality, was
soon proved by the easy manner with which the new
Government disposed of the various armed rebellions of its
opponents. First, Kerensky, at the head of some armed
forces, mainly consisting of military cadets, officers, and
a few Cossack regiments, moved against Petrograd, and
succeeded in penetrating as far as Tsarskoe Selo. Several
detachments from the Petrograd garrison and from the
newly-formed working-class or " Red " guards sent to
meet him sufficed to wreck the attempt completely, so
that Kerensky barely escaped with his life in the dis-
guise of a peasant. Immediately after, at Petrograd
itself and at Moscow, military cadets, assisted by volun-
teers from bourgeois classes, raised the standard of
rebellion under the auspices of the local city councils
(dominated as these were at the time by the Socialist-
Revolutionaries and reactionary, monarchist and Cadet
organisations.) Owing to the reluctance of the Govern-
ment to shed blood, the rebels succeeded in capturing
X
30
some important positions, such as the central telephone
station and the Winter Palace at Petrograd j[and the
Kremlin at Moscow. Then the garrisons and the " Red
Guards " came forward, and a series of bloody battles
ensued, which resulted in the total defeat of the rebels.
At the main headquarters of the army also, at Mohilev,
an attempt was made by the Socialist-Revolutionaries,
under Tchernoff, to form an anti-Bolshevik Government
in order to lead troops against Petrograd, The Commander-
in Chief, Dukhonin, was himself in sympathy with the
scheme, and refused to carry out the peace decree of the
People's Commissaries. The troops refused to move,
arrested Dukhonin and lynched him as a traitor, and the
would-be new Government was dead even before it was
born. In the south the most formidable rebellion broke
out, led by the famous General Kaledin, the chief Ataman
of the Don Cossacks, with the assistance of Korniloff,
Alexeyeff, and the entire gang of reactionaries and Cadets
under Rodzianko, the former President of the Duma, and
Miliukoff. The difficulty of coping with it was the greater
as the National Council of the Ukraine, the so-called Rada,
which consisted of the same type of politicians as the
Russian Socialist-Revolutionaries and Cadets, being also
hostile to the Bolsheviks, suddenly proclaimed " neutrality "
and refused to allow troops and Red Guards sent from the
North against Kaledin to pass through their territory.
For several weeks the Kaledin rebellion loomed very large,
but ultimately his own Cossacks went over to the Bol-
sheviks, the Ukrainan people on their part disavowed the
Rada and allowed several Bolshevik regiments to pass to
the Don. The rebellion was soon crushed, the chief centres
of the Don districts were captured, and Kaledin himself
committed suicide. A similar fate befell the rebellion of
Dutoff, the Ataman of the Cossacks of Orenburg district.
In distant Siberia, too, an anti-Bolshevik Government was
formed under the leadership of local Cadets and Socialist-
Revolutionaries, but its life was short-lived, being over-
thrown by the local Soviets and Red Guards. In short,
everywhere the Bolsheviks triumphed against their enemies
with the help of the masses of the people— the workers,
31
soldiers, and peasants. Neither the Tsar nor Kerensky
ever enjoyed such active and unanimous support on the
part of the masses of the people throughout the vast
country, and it was almost tragic to hear how, in face of
these facts, their opponents continued parrot-like to talk
of the Bolsheviks as usurpers, as men who represented only
a fraction of the nation, and who leaned entirely for support
on bayonets.
The truth, of course, is that in the eyes of the bourgeois
class, and even its political supporters among the oppor-
tunist school of Socialists, the masses of the people, as has
ever been the case in history, counted for very little more
than fodder for cannons or revolutions, and that the " third
estate " loomed as the only true representative class of the
nation — nay, as the nation itself. The Miliukoff s and the
Rodziankos, the generals, the intellectuals — these were
the " nation," although they, together with the whole
capitalist and landlord classes, of which they werefthe
standard-bearers, barely constituted 15 per cent, of the
population. Hence the Bolsheviks^" who, without the
active support of the industrial proletariat, the peasant
soldiers, and the great mass of peasantry, would not have \
been able to remain in power a single day, were only
" usurpers," demagogues, conspirators, etc., against whom
the employment of every form of opposition was legitimate. (
The attempts to oust them by physical force, that is, by
mobilising against them the troops from the front and
the Cossacks from the Don, having failed dismally, re-
course was had to a universal boycott in the shape of a n
general strike of all the officials and employees in Govern- <J
nient, municipal, and, generally, public services, as well as
schools, hospitals, food committees, and of factory and y
mine owners, including those under contract for the ^ zn
supply of war material. No more ruthless boycott and
" sabotage " had ever taken place either in Russia or in
any other country. When the great general strike, Qwhich
brought the Tsarist autocracy to its knees, took place in
October, 1905, at least the doctors, the pharmacists, the
men employed in the waterworks and such-like public
services remained at their post with the express approval,
32
and sometimes even at the direct orders, of the revolutionary
leaders. Now it was different. Now the bourgeoisie, with
the thorough ruthlessness which distinguishes all its actions
in defence of its class interests against the popular masses,
resolved to fight the Bolshevik regime, even though the
population in the cities might perish from hunger and
disease and the army might be left without the necessaries
either of defence or sheer existence. And because the
Bolshevik Government found itself on that account unable
to administer its decrees, and even to obtain from the State
and other banks the necessary means of paying the lower
officials and the Government workers (who throughout
had remained at their posts in spite of all the intimidation
practised against them), the bourgeoisie and its Press
, myrmidons had the additional impudence to deride the
Bolsheviks for their impotence, and even to argue there-
from that they did not represent the country.
THE ALLEGATIONS OF "VIOLENCE."
It was natural that the Government should, in these
circumstances, have recourse to methods of constraint and
restraint. Some of the worst boycotters among the higher
officials were either put into prison or -had their bread cards
taken away from them. Others were simplv dismissed and
deprived of their right to pension. Manufacturers and
bankers who took part in the general economic " sabotage "
were also arrested and their businesses taken away and
confiscated for the benefit of the State, to be run directly
by the Government. Arrest and imprisonment, with a view
to trial by revolutionary courts, were further inflicted on
politicians and bankers who had been discovered carrying
on a conspiracy with the rebel Cossack generals, and a
number of papers who had been supporting and even agitat-
ing in favour of the bourgeois boycott, including some
socialist organs, were suspended, and in a few cases entirely
suppressed. All these and similar measures were in the
■ nature not so much of reprisals or punishments as of com-
pulsion to work, for in the overwhelming majority of cases
I the cessation of the boycott or a pledge to resume work
sufficed to restore to the " saboteurs " their freedom and
32
Sf Sfw ?f ^ it ? ZensMp - Becau9e Countess Panin Minister
of Public Kehei m the last Kerensky Government refused
stcetr^ ^^ ^ de P art men t to her Lshev k
successor, she was put into prison and kept there until the
money was restored to the State ; and when Purishkev teh
archist conspiracy, was condemned to four vears' forced
- labour on public works he was expressly tol/tiS if after
one year's confinement in prison he would > sigr i a written
pledge to desist from all political agitation ?rfe rest of Ms
SfedW 11 1 Vff^ A1 « er ' the "^tlence »
practised by the Bolshevik Government even on its most
mtr 7 e i™f aC ? blG °^° nents ^ been astonf hSgly
ma certainly it cannot even be remotely com oared
-theT m degree or extent, with the « SL ^ t t !
French Revolution or with that generally practised bv
bourgeois governments against their enemies P S spite of
all provocation, not a single sentence of death . hnf W,
pronounced by Bolshevik? justice, and t " nt of mere
^numbers of persons arrested or papers suppressed itZm
compare very favourably even with feffiS
Under the latter, hundreds of Bolsheviks and the pofi ™ a ]
opponents languished in Petrograd prisons alone for manv
long months without ever having had even the chTrte?
mostly ^^^"ST^^^^^^
=ed on the ch^e^a^ fT^LZtl
%^^^*°^° n ^ ^ in acc -dance wkh
tne Governments promise. As for sentences of death
hundreds and thousands of them were inflicted and carried
out in the case of soldiers and whole units who refiSS to
expose their bare breasts to the machine J^nfttl
SEKSl f he de 1 h penalty was « XSc^
^1S!:^^ <* — y whef
wh^rA Ce ° f ? eSe f i LCts the cries of Bolshevik " terrorism "
rTf h. w been r ? oundin £ ever since from the ?Wts
raised f ^^^ th ™ aiders and abettors, who never
raised a word of protest against the much more rutmlss
34
r , gu ne. of WW-E^^S sfaXw^afJn^
hypocrisy, part of the campaign i expression of
of the hammer w Communards sent a
the trfer in cold blood of 35,000 men women and
^TJ£££%££& w^e^mlry?
DISSOLUTION OF COHSTITUEHT ASSEMBLY^
The greatest crime ^P^^J^t^A
however, has been ^ tectum crt %
Assembly, which, alter many J f th Bolshevik
regime, met at last under the auspices ot tne *£
,5 s ' + t+ mnv certainly appear as a monsuuus
Government, it may certaimy ^ ree rme which
Sa^fSef aSS^ !&£* -insUtntmn
regaras ltseii generations, which the
golsbevfe Serves had been championing ever since
fhe firl evoWion of 1905 with more cnf msias™ than
% other party, and which moreover, in the present^
cum stances ^^d tobe the only^y
afraid of the v ^ c * °* "~ t assem §lv known to demo-
SSSSSS ^JSSM^f - tdXbS
of soldiers and the fists of the working-class ? Indeed, had
not he composition of the Constituent Assembly on the
£v first dav shown a decided majority against the Bol-
Ihevfc andLs Z that the circumstance which prompted
tt Bolsheviks, who had allowed the eta* ons to th
Assembly to take place and the Assembly itself to meet,
to disperse it ?
35
To those whose order of ideas still clings to traditions
of old bourgeois democracy the arguments of the opponents
of the Bolsheviks will appear as irrefutable, but a closer
examination of the circumstances and a detachment from
inherited political - measures of value will > not show only
the inevitableness, but also the intrinsic justification of the
violence done by the Bolsheviks to the Constituent
Assembly. When Lenin returned to Russia at the end of
April he, with his clear foresight of the coming developments,
at once proclaimed that the Russian revolution would either
assert itself as a Republic of the Soviets, that is, as a
Republic in which the supreme power would actually, and
not merely on paper, belong to the proletariat and the
poorer peasants, or it would not assert itself at all, but
would perish at the hands of its own internal enemies.
This pronouncement did not find favour even with Lenin's
own closest political friends. How could the bourgeois
classes be eliminated from power ? Was Russia ripe for
such a dictatorship of the disinherited masses ? Even
while fighting for the transfer of all power to the Soviets
the leaders of the Bolsheviks were at that time unable to
follow out their own train of thought to the end, and
imagined, in a more or less confused way, that the exercise
of power by the Soviets would only be temporary, that a
Constituent Assembly, representing all classes, including
the bourgeoisie, would in due course meet and decide in
favour of a bourgeois Government, and that then the
classes that were organised in the Soviets, that is, the pro-
letariat and the peasantry, would voluntarily step down and
allow the bourgeoisie to take their place. It did not enter
their minds that the bourgeoisie itself might abdicate its
powers by proclaiming a universal boycott of Government
authority, or that the proletariat and the peasantry, once
possessed of power, might not be willing to restore it to
their class enemies. Lenin did not argue with them, but
allowed the events to justify his prognostications. He
proved right. The revolution was ebbing out, and would
have ebbed out entirely had not the Bolshevik revolution
helped the Soviets to assert themselves. The Soviets, both
centrally and locall}?-, became the State, and their power
was confirmed by the universal strike of the bourgeoisie.
\;
36
What sense was there in allowing a Constituent Assembly
to proclaim itself the supreme authority in the State and to
supersede the Soviets ? None whatsoever. The rule of
the Soviets meant the assertion of the revolution and of
the working and peasant classes, whereas the rule of the
Constituent Assembly would have meant the re-establish-
ment of the rule of those very classes and parties which had
nearly ruined the revolution, and which spelt the political
and economic subjection of the popular masses. Should
revolutionary Social-Democrats have permitted it ? Should
they have stultified their own action of a few weeks pre-
viously ? Had they wrested the power from the bourgeois
classes and handed it over to the labouring masses in order
to wrest it back from the latter and put it again into the
hands of their enemies ? The very idea of it was absurd.
Either one agreed that Russia must, by a striking innova-
tion, establish a new form of State, a State of the labouring
masses, and in that case a Constituent Assembly, such as
had emerged in all previous bourgeois revolutions, was an
absurdity, or a Constituent Assembly was the crown of the
revolutionary edifice, and in that case it had been a blunder
and a crime on the part of the Bolsheviks to have carried
through their Socialist revolution. The Bolsheviks acted
logically when they chose the first part of the dilemma ;
the others were also right in choosing the second part, be-
cause they were opposed to the idea of any other than bour-
geois rule. One certainly could not with any consistency
be an opponent of the bourgeois regime, and yet play off
a Constituent Assembly against the Soviets. In fact, the
adherents of the Constituent Assembly were, and still are,
those who had themselves either opposed or kept delaying
it so long as they, while the Kerensky regime lasted, had
reason to fear that the popular masses might gain through it
undue importance ; ^they became enthusiastic about it
only when they saw, after the Bolshevik revolution, that a
Constituent Assembly was their sole chance of regaining
at least a portion of their old power. Their suddenly
awakened sense of democracy was only the expression of
their sense of disappointment at losing that last chance.
1
37
THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT.
The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, then, meant
the final establishment of the rule of the Soviets, that is,
of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasant class,
pending the reconstruction of society which \ ould do away
with classes altogether and admit every citizen of Russia to
the full exercise of civic rights. The Bolsheviks may only
be blamed for not having foreseen, as their leader Lenin
had, the logical implications of their own war-cry, " All
power to the Soviets," and for discovering them only when
confronted with the accomplished facts of the situation ;
but that is a blame which has nothing to do with the
charges of coup d'etat, of usurpation, of violence against
the principles of democracy which it pleases the Russian
and foreign bourgeoisie to hurl at them. The real Con-
stituent Assembly of the proletarian-peasant Republic of
the Soviets met a week later, when the All- Russian Congress
of the Soviets assembled, and was soon joined by the All-
Russian Congress of Peasant Delegates. Both of them
endorsed by an overwhelming majority the policy and
the actions of the Council of People's Commissioners, and
elected a joint Central Executive Committee to repre-
sent permanently the labouring masses of the Russian
nation, and to act as the supreme legislative and con-
trolling authority. Their political complexion showed
better than anything else could that the Constituent
Assembly, which contained a majority against the Bol-
sheviks, had not faithfully reflected the real mind of the
people, owing chiefly to the fact that during the elections
and the preceding electoral campaign the peasants in the
country districts had been as yet unaware of the deep
cleavage among the Socialist-Revolutionaries, all of whom
talked of the socialisation of the land and of peace, and for
whose candidates they voted as if they still were a united
party. In the interval between these elections and the
meeting of the All- Russian Peasant Congress not only did
the cleavage between the " right " and the " left " wings of
the party become itself much more pronounced, but, also,
the peasants became more clearly aware of it. Had the
38
Constituent Assembly been elected a couple of months later
it would have shown a large majority for the Bolshevik
policy.
VI. — The Bolshevik Programme
of Peace,
THE NEGOTIATIONS AT BREST-LITQVSK.
It remains to sketch out the Bolshevik programme of peace,
which, after all, was the chief plank in their platform, which
had gained for them the adhesion of the overwhelming
majority of the people. This very fact shows that the real
usurpation, the real violence, the real disregard of the
principles of democracy were all acts of which those parties
had been guilty who for eight months previously had been
organising for war, had led the unfortunate masses to
slaughter in the July offensive, and had restored the death
penalty for acts of insubordination in the army. True to
their word, the Bolsheviks, immediately on gaining power,
offered peace to all the belligerents, and a specially sum-
moned Congress of the Soviets endorsed the action. The
Allies refused the offer, the Germans accepted it. What
were the Bolsheviks to do ? Were they to repeat the old
methods of persuasion and diplomatic talk with the Allies,
which had shown themselves so futile during the previous
eight months ? They went to Brest-Litovsk to negotiate
first for an armistice, and next for peace — a general, if the
Allies agreed to join them, or separate, if need be. What
were their plans ? They knew that the military position
was against them. The Russian army had been melting
away ever since the last months of the Tsarist regime. It
had been melting away through wholesale desertion and
disease caused by hunger, by lack of munitions and general
equipment, and by a complete lack of faith in the Russian
and Allied war aims. During the first eight months of the
revolution the process had continued at an ever accelerating
speed. The disorganisation of the transport, of the supply
of raw material and fuel to the industries, and of the food
\
39
and clothing supply had proceeded apace, and though the
Allies had brought in a considerable quantity of war
material, large sectors of the immense front were still
lacking in munitions, machine guns, heavy guns, trench
props, boots, tents, carts, etc. Above all, the morale of
the army deteriorated immensely owing to obvious contra-
diction between the watchwords of the revolution and the
avowed objects of conquests which dominated the war[
policy of the Allies and which the Kerensky administration \
was willingly, or unwillingly, helping to attain by further
sacrificing the blood and treasure of the Russian people. (
The desertions and acts of 'insubordination now became so
numerous and so extensive that on one occasion the Minister
of War openly admitted that by November -there would
no longer be any army left in the trenches. The highest
naval authority under Kerensky, when offered a post by
the Bolsheviks, replied that the only service he could render
Russia would be to tell the Allies she could no longer fight.
The Bolsheviks could do nothing to remedy the state of
affairs, and they went to Brest-Litovsk relying solely upon
the revolutionary succour of the working classes of the other
belligerent countries — above all, of Germany and Austria-
Hungary. It was in order to provoke that succour, that is,
to kindle the fire, of a revolution in the Central Empires,
that Trostky, the head of the Russian peace delegation,
tried to prolong the negotiations even after their hopeless-
ness had become apparent, and made those speeches which
did more to set the German people in opposition to their
bourgeois classes and Junker rulers than all the declarations
of the Allied statesmen put together had done in the pre-
ceding three and a half years of war. As a matter of fact,
a great strike, involving over a million workers, broke out
in Germany and previously in Austria, as a demonstration /
against the now revealed aggressive war aims of the Austro-
German generals and diplomats. Had not at that very
moment the Allied generals and diplomats assembled at
Versailles issued a counterblast, who knows but that those
strikes might have turned into a serious revolutionary
movement ? The same result would have been achieved
if the Allies had from the first joined the Bolsheviks at
40
Brest and isolated the Austro-Germans by the„.aeceptance
of the Russian formula of peace. As it was, the strike
movement came for the present to nothing, and Trotsky
was confronted with the dilemma of either capitulating to
the Germans completely or of renewing the war. As he
would not do the former and as he could not do the latter,
he broke off the negotiations, declared that Russia was out
of the war, but refused to sign the humiliating terms of
peace. He had, however, in reserve in his mind, in accord-
ance with the injunction of Lenin, who from the first had
not been hopeful of an immediate revolution in the Central
Empires, that he would nevertheless sign the peace if the
Germans were either to present him with an ultimatum
or denounce the armistice by giving the agreed seven days*
notice. The Germans, however, did neither, and with a
perfidy not easily matched in military history, immediately
broke the arimstice and marched against the defenceless
and partly demobilised Russians. The rest is known.
The Bolshevik gave in and signed the aggravated German
conditions of peace.
THE SEPARATE PEACE.
For that, of course, they have again been denounced
by their political opponents and by many in the Allied
countries, who had mostly before been admiring Trotsky's
conduct at Brest. Yet what else could the Bolsheviks
have done, with such a terrible legacy as they had received
on their hands, in the shape of hunger, lack of every neces-
sity for war, disorganisation of the State machinery, dis-
location of the entire transport system, and with all the
bourgeois elements against them — especially ' in the
Ukraine, where they had gone so far as to make a separate
peace with the Germans and to invite them to march into
their country to help them against the Bolsheviks and
their own pro-Bolshevik popular masses ? A section of
the Bolshevik leaders were in favour of repudiating the
German terms and of organising a voluntary army of re-
volutionists to continue the struggle until such time as the
proletariat in Germany and Austria had risen. The
majority, however, knowing the condition of the Russian
41
masses better, refused to assume such a responsibility in
face of the problematic developments in Germany and
Europe at large, and insisted upon the acceptance of the
Brest treaty. Their, and, above all, Lenin's argument was
that no effective resistance was at the moment possible
until the country had been more or less reorganised, that
with the Germans in the Ukraine the attempt would be still
more hopeless, and that those who were prepared to wait
until the rising of the working class in Germany had already
been deceived in their expectations when they thought that
the Germans would not dare to march against Socialist
Russia for fear of their own people. On the other hand,
if only they could get a respite, the Russian Socialist Re-
public would be firmly established and would in due course,
even without actual fighting, exercise such a potent influence
over the peoples of other countries that the German rule,
not only in the territories forcibly separated from Russia,
but also in Germany and Austria themselves would be
destroyed. This view carried the day, and the future will
show to what extent it was,right.
THE FUTURE,
In the meantime it is certain that if left alone by
foreign enemies, the Soviet rule will in no distant future
establish a Socialist regime in Russia. Already the masses
of the people — more particularly of the peasantry- — are
learning the work of administration through the Soviets,
and the State officials and other public employees, together
with the rest of the intellectuals, learning wisdom through
hunger, arc going back to their old posts in ever-increasing
numbers, so that the wheels of the Government machine
are already revolving, and the great decrees issued by the
People's Commissioners and the Soviets are passing from
the " paper " stage into life. Even the most stubborn
among the " intellectuals " will soon learn that, after all,
the people is a much better master than the capitalist, and
that a Socialist regime is likely to render them even more
happy than a. bourgeois regime. Thereby a new epoch
opens in the life of mankind, and though it is hazardous
to make prognostications, with two foreign invaders on
42
Russian territory, and invasion threatened by the " Allies "
with the object of restoring power to the bourgeoisie, with
all the world, including the greater part of the Socialist world,
looking on with undisguised hostility, one may neverthe-
less venture to say that the Bolshevik revolution, whatever
its ultimate fate may be, will remain for all time the greatest
source of inspiration to the struggling proletariat of all
countries until the triumph of Socialism covers also with
eternal glory the Red Flag implanted by Lenin and his
friends on November 6-7, 1917.
March, 1918.
43
Aa.
n \AJ WJ& tl n^AMcyM^^^r
Supplementary Chapter
By Ivy Litvinoff.
Since the above was written a year has elapsed, and much
water has flowed in the rivers of Russia and much blood
has flowed on her plains. The history of this period is
marked by numerous dramatic incidents which, however,
are still fresh in public mind and need not be recorded in
detail. So far as organised political parties were concerned,
the conclusion of the " Peace " of Brest left the Soviet
Government in still greater isolation than before. The
Left Socialist-Revolutionaries withdrew from the Govern-
ment, though not from the Soviets, and an opposition was
formed even within the Bolsheviks' own ranks. The
leaders of the Trade Unions, too, were almost to a man
opposed to the treaty. Outside Russia's boundaries all
the world rose against the Bolsheviks. In the Allied coun-
tries Labour, not to speak of the Imperialists, was against
them, and even in Germany, which profited by the " Peace ' '
thev came in for a good deal of abuse. The majority
Socialists, who had to excuse their own treason, argued
that by disbanding their troops and by making inflamma-
tory speeches at Brest, the Bolsheviks had brought disaster
on themselves, while the Minority Socialists, the " Inde-
pendents," furious at the easy victory obtained by their
Imperialists, blamed the Bolsheviks for their " selfishness."
It will redound to the eternal credit of the Soviet Govern-
ment, and, above all, of Lenin himself, that amidst such a
complete political isolation they remained true to the course
they had adopted, the course which subsequently proved
the right one. Not for a moment did they "flinch in their
attitude, which was prompted by the expectation that the
44
" breathing space," as Lenin called it, thus gained, would
allow them to carry out a certain amount of constructive
work necessary for the material consolidation of the new
Socialist regime and at the same time enable them to live
while the revolutionary forces unchained everywhere by the
war were gathering strength.
In this attitude they were supported by the overwhelm-
ing majority of the popular masses in Russia, as evidenced
by the resolutions at the Soviet congresses and numerous
local Soviets. But in spite of this the parties of opposition,
claiming to speak in the name of the Russian people and
Russian democracy, broke out in a furious agitation
against the Soviet Government, thereby unwittingly
creating an atmosphere favourable to counter-revolutionary
intrigues and deluding the Allies into believing that any
action on their part against the Government and the
Soviet regime would meet with the support of the entire
opposition and would be greeted with enthusiasm even by
the masses of workers and peasants themselves.
counter-revolutionary intrigues and the
allied attack.
The result was that the counter-revolutionary forces of
Russia began raising their heads, organising armed revolts
in various isolated towns or districts, or making clever use,
for this purpose, of the Right. Socialist Revolutionaries and
Mensheviks, while the Allies at the same time bought over
to their side the Czecho-Slovak prisoners of war, in order,
as they said, to prevent Siberia from falling into the hands
of the Germans (thousands of miles away), but, in reality,
to cut off Soviet Russia from the only source of food supply
left her after the German occupation of the Ukraine. The
counter-revolutionary outbreaks proved in each case a
complete fiasco — not, indeed, so much through the action
of the Soviet troops as by reason of the revolts of the local
popular masses who were faithful to the Soviet regime.
Only in the south-east, among the Cossacks of the Don,
Orenburg, Astrakhan, and Kuban, the revolts, led by
Tsarist generals, lingered longer and in parts, linger still to
45
this day, owing partly to the distance from the centre,
but chiefly to the very substantial material help in money
and war material extended to them first by the Germans
and then by the Allies. The direct action of the Allies,
through the Czecho- Slovaks, proved more successful for the
simple reason that in the absence of local garrisons or even
police on the outskirts of the country, any town or district
could in those days be captured and maintained in occupa-
tion by a well-disciplined armed band. It was in this
manner that rhe Czecho-Slovak troops, deluded by fables
that the Bolshevik Government Was preparing to deliver
them into the hands of its German paymasters, and re-
munerated at the rate of 200 roubles per head per month
(as against 5 roubles previously), were able to get hold of all
the chief stations on the Siberian railway and thus to be-
come masters of the narrow, but vitally important, strip of
land on either side of the rails from Samara to Vladivostok. '
Allied troops were then landed at the last-named place,
and a couple of months later, in June, at Murmansk. The
landing at Vladivostok was accompanied by the usual assur-
ance of the innocence of the invaders' intentions. That,
however, did not prevent them from permitting the arrest
and imprisonment of all the prominent local Soviet and
Bolshevik leaders by the Czecho-Slovaks and the Russian
counter-revolutionaries, from dissolving the local munici-
pality and ordering new elections and, when the elections
resulted, to their utmost surprise, in the return of a Bol-i
shevik majority, from proclaiming martial law and gnashing!
th^el^ections^. In the case of Murmansk they had~r^ource|
to the method of bribing the local leaders by specious pro-
mises and hard cash into concluding a " treaty of alliance "
with them, whereby the Allies were allowed to land for the
protection of the country from the Germans (in this case
also hundreds of miles away across impassable marshes
and bogs) and undertook to provide them with food, or
refrain from interfering in the internal affairs of the region,
and even to recognise the supreme authority of the Mur-
mansk Soviet. The object of this action, as revealed by
the subsequent seizure of Archangel and other places on the
White Sea by force of arms, was not so much to threaten
:
46
Petrograd as to try to establish a connection with the
Czecho-Slovak front in the east and south-east and thus
form a cordon, shutting in the Soviet Republic on all sides.
There they still are, presumably waiting for the return of
warm weather in order to 1 advance further south and east.
The way in which they have respected their pledge not to
interfere in the internal affairs of the region is best illus-
trated by the fact that after capturing Kem they arrested
the local Soviet and shot three of its members, and that
having set up at Archangel a bogus " native " Government
with the renegade Socialist, Tchaykovsky, at its head they
/ have now, through that Government, abolished all the
\ local Soviets, including the one at Murmansk, with which
^\ 1 1 tKe^rconcluded the original treaty, replacing them by the
1 time-worn Zemstvos. Rumour has it that at the moment
of writing the peasants and workers of the region are in
revolt, that at least one regiment recruited by the so-called
Government has had to be disbanded and punished for
mutiny, and that altogether the condition of affairs there
is highly critical.
In the meantime the political enemies of the Bolsheviks
at home continued their counter-revolutionary intrigues.
As the Czecho-Slovaks were capturing city after city from
the Volga to Vladivostok, the Right Socialist-Revolution-
aries, sometimes in alliance with the Mensheviks, sometimes
with the Cadets, sometimes even with avowed Mon-
archists and Tsarist officials and generals, were setting up,
in the name of the " Constituent Assembly," local and even
" central " administrations, giving the latter the pompous
names of " All- Russian Governments," suppressing the
Soviets, abolishing the decrees of the Soviet Government,
and executing and arresting local Soviet leaders by the
hundreds. In this way an " All-Russian Government "
was formed at Samara, then at Ufa, a second at Omsk, a
third at Vladivostok, and so forth, which at first were at
loggerheads with one another, and then coalesced info one
with its central seat at Omsk, only to be ultimately upset
XI by Admiral Koltchak, who arrested most of its members
and proclaimed himself dictator a la Bonaparte. And
1 these intrigues and tragic plots were hatched and carried
47
out with the moral and material -assistance of the Allies,
who had as little compunction in supplying the counter-
revolutionaries of all shades and hues with gold as Pitt in ['
his days had when he supported the enemies of the French I
Revolution outside and inside France. /
i J
TERRORIST ACTIVITIES OF THE SOCIALIST-
REVOLUTIONARIES OF THE LEFT,
More honest, but also more foolish, were the Socialist-
Revolutionaries of the Left, who by this time — midsummer
1918— had worked themselves up into such a state of
nerves over the iniquities of the Brest Peace that no
means seemed to them too fantastic or criminal to employ
against the Soviet Government and. its policy. One fine
day, while the highest authority in the country, the Con-
gress of Soviets, was in session, they hatched and success-
fully carried out a plot to assassinate Mirbach, the German
Ambassador. At the same time they effected the arrest
of some members of the Government and seized certain
public offices, proclaiming the deposition of the Bolsheviks
from power and their own accession to office on a programme
of war with Germany. They completely missed fire. The
German Government, well aware by that time of the dangers
which were threatening it, at home and at the front, did not
react on the provocation and did not declare war on Russia ;
while the Bolshevik Government, unlike Rerensky's
Government .on the memorable days of November 6-7,
did not even shake in the saddle, being supported by the
overwhelming majority of the workers and soldiers. The
conspirators were themselves arrested by the hundred, a
number among them, including the authors and direct j
abettors of the assassination of Mirbach, were executed, f I
and the whole rebellion was wound up within, practically,
twenty-four hours.
This, however, did not end the trouble. Individual
assassination now became the order of the day. In the
days of Tsardom the Socialist-Revolutionaries used to
justify their terrorist methods on the ground that there
were no other, more constitutional, ways of removing the
48
enemies of the people from power. This was a very narrow
view to take of what constituted revolutionary action, and
was therefore always condemned by the Social Democrats,
who were working for a revolution by the people. Still, it
had its moral justification in the intolerable sense of in-
justice and despair on the part of the individual terrorist.
But with the masses of the workers and peasants in actual
possession of power even that individual justification was
gone. The Bolsheviks, in their time, had also been in a
helpless minority, but they did not have recourse to forcible
methods of removing their political opponents. They
worked patiently among the masses, relying upon the
ultimate triumph of truth. The Socialist-Revolutionaries
apparently had no such confidence in the convincing force
of their opinions. They altogether lacked that power to
foresee the future trend of events on which alone fruitful
political work can be based, which is only supplied by a
thorough grasp of Marxist principles of historic material-
ism. In the case of the Socialist- Revolutionaries, their
renewal of the terrorist methods under the Soviet regime
was merely a confession of political incompetence and an
expression of their despair of ever being able to gain the
masses over to their views. The assassination of Mirbach
was followed by the assassination of Uritsky, President of
the Petrograd Extraordinary Commission for fighting the
Counter-Revolution and Speculation, later on of Volo-
darsky, Petrograd Commissioner for the Press, two highly
gifted and devoted leaders of the Bolshevik party, and in
between came the attempt to assassinate Lenin himself.
And to crown all, as if to show the inter-relation between
the enemies of the Soviet regime within and without the
country, a vast foreign plot was discovered, in which, it
was alleged., the prime movers were no other than the
diplomatic representatives of the Allies themselves.
But all these assaults and intrigues broke down miserably
against the impregnable walls of the young Soviet regime.
All they produced was an intense Reeling of bitterness
coupled with a stern resolve among the proletariat and the
organs of its authority, the Soviets and the Government, to
protect their revolutionary acquisitions at all costs. As in
49
France 120 years previously, so in Soviet Russia, the reply
to these combined assaults of domestic and foreign enemies
was the Red Terror.
THE RED TERROR.
What is Terror ? Is it Terror when the British Govern-
ment executes scores of Irish rebels and imprisons and
keeps in prison for years hundreds of others ? Is it Terror
when the same Government, in suppressing a revolt among
the natives of Ceylon (1915) executes and imprisons hun-
dreds upon hundreds ? Is it Terror when the American
authorities, in fighting strikers and pacifists during the war,
shoots down and imprisons citizens and foreigners by the
score ? Is it Terror when Venizelos, put into power by
foreign bayonets, shoots, imprisons and arraigns before
military and other courts scores of political opponents?
Is it Terror when Sidonio Paes, having usurped supreme
power in Portugal, claps 5,000 Republican opponents into
prison ? Or does Terror only become Terror when it is em-
ployed against friends of existing capitalist Governments
and against members of the ruling classes ? It would seem
so. When, by order of the Tsar, tens of thousands of native
men ; women and children were massacred and starved to
death in Turkestan in 1916 because they had revolted
against the illegal order to conscript them for the Russian
army, not a word of it was mentioned in the Press until
after the Revolution. When the Czecho -Slovaks and the
Right Socialist -Revolutionaries celebrated orgies of blood
in Samara, Ufa and countless other towns which they had
captured from the local Soviets, the papers only spoke of
restoration of " law and order." But when, by order of
the Soviets, a Tsarist Minister, caught spinning a counter-
revolutionary intrigue is shot, or when the same fate befalls
a financier engaged in gigantic and unscrupulous specula-
tions in bread, or when, a batch of officers who had accepted
service in the Red Army are executed for betraying the
troops under their command to the enemy, then, of course,
the outcry becomes deafening, and the Press is horror-
struck at these acts of Terror. To this day so-called
public opinion, that is, the opinion manufactured by the
spoon-fed Press, is unable to get over the execution of the
50
ex 'Tsf , and day after day the col umns of the British Press
are filled with lurid pictures, supplied by " eye-witnesses "
and other reliable travellers/ 5 of the scene in the cellar
when that great man and benevolent ruler was ruthlessly
shot by the savage Bolsheviks. And, not content with
discreetly suppressing or glossing over the terrorist deeds
of their own and of their friends, and with recording in-
flating and expanding the similar deeds of the Bolsheviks
the makers of public opinion, aided and abetted by the
official powers that be, add to the record of things that
happened things which never happened, killing with their
pen again and again persons such as members of the Tsar's
family, Tsar's Ministers, Princes, Counts and other grand
personages or prominent old revolutionists like Bresh-
kovskaya and Kropotkin, in order, a short time afterwards
to revive and kill them again.
As a matter of fact, the Soviet regime has been much
less sanguinary than any known in history. For the first
, six and even eight months not a single person was executed
| and whatever shedding of blood took place was either in
open street fighting with armed rebels, or else due to the
uncontrollable, unforeseen and spontaneous action of the
crowd. It is true that arrests were constantly going on
among plotters or traitors, who were as numerous among
the higher old bureaucracy, the higher clergy, the old
officers, the financiers and aristocrats as one would expect
in the circumstances. But could the Soviet Government—
the Government of the overwhelming majority of the
people— m its fight for existence amidst universal ruin and
starvation, allow plots and treason to be carried out with
impunity ? What Government, even in so-called demo-
cratic countries where government represents only the
capitalist minority of the nation, would act otherwise even
in conditions of peace and plenty ? In point of fact, the
imprisonment of the numerous counter-revolutionaries
during the- first months of the Soviet regime did not have
even the character of punishment, but solely that of re-
straint. When Purishkevitch, the notorious rea'ctionary
agitator of the days of Tsardom, was caught conspiring
against the new order, he was sentenced by the people's
!
51
court to four years' " social seclusion," with " socially-
useful " employment on public works, but pending the
organising of such works he was ordered to be detained in
prison for one year, with the proviso that if by the end of
that year he gave a pledge not to engage in conspiracies in
future he should be set free ! At the same time his accom-
plice, a young aristocrat, was only sentenced to a " public
censure " and to be handed over to his relatives, who were
to be responsible for his future behaviour ( How the pro-
fessional judges and public prosecutors laughed at these
judgments of the poeple's court. Again, as a characteristic
instance of the treatment meted out to the enemies of the
Soviet regime during the first period of its existence, the
fact may be mentioned that when General Krasnoff, who
had led Kerensky's troops against Petrograd after the
Bolshevik revolution, was taken prisoner, he was not shot,
or even imprisoned, but was released on his word of honour
that he would not again take up arms against the new order.
This same Krasnoff, supported by the Allies, is now the
leader^of the Don Cossacks against the Soviet Government t
In fact, so mild was the repressive policy of the Soviet
Government at first, and so completely did it rely upon the
righteousness of its cause, that its enemies themselves had
nothing but a contemptuous laugh for it. As late as June
last year the " Novaya Zhizn," Gorki's then bitterly
oppositional paper, wrote :
" Our- constructive Communists imagine that whole
classes of .society can be re-educated by sermons and
exhortations and popular speeches at solemn meetings.
Implacable foes of all religion and moralisation, who at one
time used thoughtlessly to assert that in all morality there
is not a vestige of ethics, they have now gone to the other
extreme, have become moralists of the worst type, and have
turned into a sort of revolutionary parsons."
That is a much better testimony to the character of the
Soviet Government's relations to its enemies than the
whinings of the counter-revolutionaries and their intellec-
tual helpers and abettors at the frequent arrests and
suspensions of various papers guilty of open advocacy of
sabotage and rebellion.
V\AAAJI, " Q)
52
; I ' i !
4M>
RED TERROR A REPLY TO THE WHITE TERROR.
The Red Terror may be said to have begun as a reply
to the White Terror, to the bestialities committed by the
Czecho-Slovaks and their Russian proteges in the beginning
l * A ^> of summer, 1918. That has ever been the case in history.
[<k{cl In a manifesto issued to "all who toil" the Council of
People's Commissioners make known the fact of the loss
of the Volga towns and Siberia, as well as the formation of
a counter-revolutionary administration at Omsk under the
flag of the " All-Russian Constituent Assembly," explain
the aim and purpose of the Czecho-Slovak and other risings
as that of cutting Soviet Russia off from all supplies of
breadstuffs, and order the mobilisation of certain annual
contingents in the affected districts. The manifesto pro-
claims : " It is incumbent upon all Soviets to watch closely
the movements of their local bourgeoisie and deal severely
with the conspirators." It was then that the practice was
first introduced— a practice which, for the rest, has always"
, been employed by capitalist Governments even in "" demo-
cratic " countries—of shooting rebels captured after the
suppression of a revolt and such persons as were discovered
to be in communication with Czecho-Slovaks and their
friends. But even so this Terror was confined territorially
to certain districts and, politically, to actual participants
m a iL^ rin< ^ rebellion. It became extended into a system
only after the assassination of Uritsky, the attempt on
^Si^i^nd the discovery of the widely-ramified conspiracy
in which the Allied diplomats were said to have been impli-
cated. Organised terror as a means not onlv of repression,
but also of intimidation, then became the order of the day'
and numerous enemies of the Soviet regime, from Left
Socialist-Revolutionaries down to avowed Monarchists,
forfeited their lives. The Extraordinary Commissions
above mentioned received wide powers to deal with
conspirators and speculators of all kinds, who were shelter-
ing themselves behind the protection of foreign Embassies,
in the Army, in the Church, and even in the Soviets and
Soviet Institutions, receiving subsidies from abroad, com-
municating to the Allied troops in the north and Siberia
political and military information, receiving and distri-
buting arms to fellow-conspirators, and so forth. The
officers, the military cadets, the students from bourgeois
classes, and members of the high clergy,* fared badly in
this connection. From the beginning of the Red Terror
to the middle o* October—its worst period— in Petrograd
alone more than 6,000 persons were arrested, of whom 800
were shot. These latter included members of a vast cor>
spiracy known as the " League of Salvation of the Country "
a monarchist and Black Hundred organisation, and those
implicated in the assassination of Uritsky. These figures
* The high clergy and a good portion of the lower, too, constituted
one of the strongest props of the Tsarist r6gime, and are naturally
up in arms against the Soviets, which have produced such a revolu-
tion in the social psychology of the masses, and have, in addition,
taken away the huge estates of the monasteries and churches for the
benefit of the people. Almost every counter-revolutionary con-
spiracy has revealed the reactionary activity of the clergy, and the
pupits and confessionals have, in numerous cases, been turned into
places of agitation against the new order. Frequently (as in France
after the dissolution of the religious congregations in 1905) the clergy
have organised armed resistance to the Soviet authorities who have
come to make an inventory of the property of the Churches or to
requisition the church buildings for educational or charitable pur-
poses. Many a pitched battle has thus been fought within the walls
of monasteries and even convents, the rebellious inmates being almost
invariably supported by the village bourgeoisie (kulaks) against the
poorer peasantry who were assisting the Soviet forces. In June last
year, in connection with a sordid affair of speculation in real estate,
in which several ecclesiastical friends of Patriarch Tikhon were in-
volved, a search was made in the residence of the Patriarch, and a
number of highly -incriminating documents were seized. The most
interesting was a. forged manifesto purporting to come from the i
non-existing " Central Committee of the Tetrograd Department of/;
-fhe Universal Israelite Alliance," which was obviously intended to
provoke pogroms, and which expressed joy at the " approach of the
hour of victory," when the Jews would be in possession of supreme
power and would take their revenge upon the Gentiles : " We shall
enslave Russia economically, and will take all her riches. Scores
of the sons of Israel are already occupying the highest posts in the
State." The Soviet Government mildly punished the Patriarch by
confining him to a monastery. Other dignitaries of the Church,
including several bishops, paid for similar and even worse offences
more dearly : hence the cries which have so moved our own Church
dignitaries about the " persecution of the Church," which emanate
from bishops and archbishops who have found shelter under the pro-
tection of various Koltchaks and the Allies at Odessa and Omsk.
Q
K
54
will compare favourably with the number of persons exe-
cuted by the Czecho-Slovaks, the Koltchaks, and the
Krasnoffs, but there is no denying that it would have been
better if the Soviet regime could have escaped the necessity
of taking so many, and, indeed, any lives at all. But then
)( the provocation was so great and the opponents of the
I Soviets so unscrupulous and brutal that it would have re-
quired something more perfect than ordinary human nature
to abstain from paying back the assailants in their own coin.
And, in any event, is it for capitalist Governments, with
their record, to cry out in horror ? This is eminently a
case when the Soviet Government can say : Let the
assassins commence
The Terror, unlike that of the French Revolution, was of
brief duration, and the Soviet regime emerged from it
without any moral hurt. It has crushed the counter-
revolution in so far as it is not supported by Allied money
and arms, and it has put an end to the sabotage of the
former officials and of the " intellectuals." The latter,
indeed, having convinced themselves of the strength of the
new regime, and realising at last the iniquity and the re-
actionary tendencies of Allied intervention, have all gone
back to their work, even barristers taking up briefs in the
new courts, and eminent musicians like Glazounoff setting
revolutionary hymns to music. The internal conditions
of the existence of the Socialist Republic are assured.
G
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i
British Socialist Party
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